The Norges Bank is set to reprise on....>

NORGES BANK: The Norges Bank is set to reprise on Thursday its "after the

summer" line on a rate hike.

- At an April 6 conference in London, Norges Bank Governor Oystein Olsen said

that he was not going to give any fresh hints on the policy outlook and with the

central bank not updating its full set of projections this month, the May 3

statement is likely to be a holding one.

- There are good reasons to suppose that Norway's economic risks lie to the

downside -- with activity data from the European Union cooling and Norwegian

inflation surprising to the downside in the most recent print.

- However, Olsen and his colleagues believe that Norway's output gap is closing

and that "rising capacity utilisation will probably push up price and wage

inflation further out," according to the March statement.

- As a result the soft recent activity data are unlikely to sway the Bank's view

that summer will be fading before a rate hike becomes plausible, while the

subdued recent inflation outturns are, in themselves, not a major deterrent to

near-term hiking. (MNI - For Full Story See Main Wire At 16:55 BST 05/01)